Palm Springs couldn’t have hit at a better time: the Andy Samberg-led comedy about an infinite time loop dropped onto streaming in July of 2020, months into a global pandemic that had forced most of us to retreat into our homes. With no end in sight, the long days and nights bled into one another, and the quirky film perfectly captured the listless monotony many of us were living through. Though most often compared to the 1993 Bill Murray classic Groundhog Day, time loop narratives are hardly new. But something about Palm Springs felt different. Rather than a single character doomed to monotonous isolation, Nyles (Samberg) and Sarah (Cristin Milioti) both find themselves trapped in the repetition together. By allowing them to find each other in the midst of their hopelessness, Palm Springs becomes more than a simple comedy, but a powerful allegory for depression and recovery through human connection.
We don’t know how long it’s been since Nyles wandered into the cosmic cave that trapped him in the loop, and neither does he. A guest at a wedding, he wakes up every morning and simply passes the time until it begins all over again. Each day is the same, and he’s given up looking for meaning in any of it. At first glance, he is spontaneous and outgoing, but this carefree zest for life hides a deep depression and apathetic loneliness.
Nyles’s experience navigating the endless sea of days is perhaps the most authentic representation of my own depression that I’ve ever seen on film. I fake happiness well. I am high-functioning and read to most people as fun and outgoing. But I’ve spent many years of my life waking up every morning only because I had to, going through the motions and waiting for the moment I could go back to bed again. I believed myself incapable of true happiness and built strong emotional walls around my heart, terrified of the pain I believed was my destiny.
Nyles also avoids emotional pain as much as possible. Using a candy bar as an example of temporary pleasure, he describes his hesitancy to commit to anything significant to keep from losing something he cares about. This detachment is not living, only surviving; he hides in monotony to avoid any kind of meaningful action. It wasn’t until watching Nyles lose himself in daily distractions that I realized how much I’d been hiding from my own life. I’d constantly retreat into movies, books, social media, and work to avoid making meaningful connections with people that might leave me vulnerable to the possibility of pain.
Though Nyles does strive to avoid pain whenever possible, his depression is massively self-destructive. Passively suicidal, he treats his life casually, taking reckless chances because he no longer values the days he has. Everything he does will be wiped away the next time he wakes up, as if it never happened, so he sees little point in doing anything. My preferred means of self-destruction was alcohol. For years, I would routinely drink enough to lay waste to my life, throwing away chances at lasting happiness for momentary pleasure because I didn’t believe anything I did while I was sober mattered. Continuing to live with constant sadness was too hard, so I stopped caring whether I lived or died. I was too scared to actually end my life, so instead I tried to throw it away by destroying anything that made it worthwhile.
Sarah is hiding as well. She is the sister of the bride, and she begins each repetition of the day in the bed of the future groom. Every morning is a reminder of her biggest mistake. Since she can’t escape it, she turns to Nyles as a distraction, drowning her shame in meaningless fun. She tries to come clean to her sister, thinking that admitting her betrayal will save her, but she wakes up again in his bed and internalizes the idea that she is undeserving of redemption. She will never be able to move past what she’s done, and her only escape is to run away. I’ve lived many years stuck in shame as well. Haunted by mistakes and past trauma, I tried to shut everything out to avoid the monster I believed myself to be. I’d decided that no matter what I did, I’d never be good enough to deserve happiness, so I did everything I could to forget that I wanted it.
But somewhere in their carefree escapades, Sarah finds herself wanting to move forward. She tells Nyles about a past marriage and realizes that, by obliterating it from her memory, she might doom herself to repeat it. Rather than admitting her mistake to others, her growth comes from finding the strength to forgive herself. She realizes that she’s not doomed to be the same person for all eternity. She is able to change, and there are people who will see her for who she really is rather than a collection of the mistakes she’s ashamed of. It wasn’t until watching Sarah make the choice to forgive herself that I realized I could do the same; I could stop living in the shame of my past and choose to move forward as the person I wanted to be rather than the person I’d been.
One common feature of any time loop movie is the suicide montage. Realizing that death will not end the loop, a character engages in an escalating string of creative suicides usually set to a catchy pop song. Though memorable and darkly comedic, these montages have always felt triggering. I suffer from intrusive suicidal thoughts, and the images of these kooky offings get stuck in my head, playing on an endless loop like the gifs they will inevitably become. The creative deaths morph into ideation and become possibilities I must protect my mind from. But Palm Springs, thankfully, turns this trope on its head. Nyles explains to Sarah that though they cannot permanently die, they can feel pain. He describes the experience of slowly dying in a hospital room and confronts her with the reality of the action she is considering.
These montages have always struck me as especially cruel because the suicides usually involve other people whose reality does not end with the main character’s death. Though it may only last a day, the pain they feel at witnessing a suicide or having been inadvertently responsible is as real the the pain of dying. My suicidal ideation hit a peak earlier this year. The turning point was thinking through the ramifications of my actual death. I thought about the person driving the truck Sarah jumps in front of and the guilt and horror that would accompany seeing her mangled body. I thought about how Nyles must feel knowing she killed herself to avoid him. And then I thought about what my friends and family would experience if I did take my life. Suicide might end my own depression, but it would begin a chain of suffering for them. In this way, perhaps these montages are an apt metaphor. Death does not end the cycle of depression, but causes the pain to spiral outward.
Though Palm Springs does deal with death, its montage and overall message is a celebration of life. Nyles and Sarah pass the time indulging their obscure whims. They learn and perform elaborate dances, reenact goofy action scenes, throw each other parties, and even fly a plane. It’s a joyous version of the montages we’ve seen so many times before, but instead of delighting in creative ways to end life, this version celebrates life’s possibilities. Sarah and Nyles do occasionally die, but it’s usually the natural consequence of taking chances that kills them, not the desire to stop living. The happiness they find in taking risks together is the turning point in their depression. They begin to look forward to the next day not because it will be different, but because they’ll get to spend it together.
Sarah eventually finds a way out of the loop, finally seeing herself as worthy of love and deciding to stop hiding from life. She asks Nyles to join her, and though he is hesitant at first, he realizes that he’d rather take the risk of losing everything over the certainty of losing Sarah. These are the scary first steps out of depression: accepting that you might be deserving of more and that happiness could actually be a possibility. I’ve begun to take those steps, but the first one was admitting to myself how much I’d been hiding from my life. In Palm Springs, I found a reflection of what my life had been and the hope I needed to see a way out. Sarah and Nyles first find each other and then find the will to choose life over simple existence. If they can do it, maybe I can too.
